The Watsons

Rose Servitova’s new novel The Watsons continues Jane Austen’s unfinished work. Austen’s draft was just a few chapters, introducing the characters, and showing Emma Watson returning to her family after being raised by an aunt. The sisters are strangers to each other, and, of course, the daughters of not-so-wealthy families need to make advantageous marriages.

I loved the dialogue and characters here. Sure, it’s not Pride and Prej, there’s no Elizabeth and Darcy love story. But this is a real tribute to the drawing-room dialogue we love in Austen novels. There’s a whole manners novel here in the shades of behavior, and there’s so much to enjoy in the subtle (and not-so-subtle) remarks about other characters who’ve left the room for a moment.

This is my stop on the Austenesque blog tour. You can check out the other stops here:

• November 18    My Jane Austen Book Club (Interview)
• November 18    Austenprose—A Jane Austen Blog (Review)
• November 19    The Lit Bitch (Excerpt)
• November 20  Austenesque Reviews (Review)
• November 20  vvb32 Reads (Review)
• November 21  All Things Austen (Review)
• November 22  My Love for Jane Austen (Spotlight)
• November 25  From Pemberley to Milton (Excerpt)
• November 25  Diary of an Eccentric (Interview)
• November 26  So Little Time… (Excerpt)
• November 27  Impressions in Ink (Review)
• November 27  Babblings of a Bookworm (Spotlight)
• November 28  More Agreeably Engaged (Review)
• November 29  My Vices and Weaknesses (Excerpt)
• November 29  The Fiction Addiction (Review)